Another Example of God's Grace in the Midst of Things

Y'all. Last week was crappy. The events of last week will take me way too long to explain but the result is this: we no longer have a contract on the house. There was much animosity involved from both parties. Losing the contract makes me both happy and sad, which are the same emotions I felt about actually having the contract in the first place, but let's move on. In addition to Real Estate Crap/Emotional Roller Coaster, I got some less than stellar test results back from the doctor, the weather was gloomy, and working 21 out of 25 days at the fair had left me wiped out and fighting both a cold and two weeks' worth of laundry.

Now to a new story. I have this neighbor; her name is Ms. Elaine and she is 85 years old. She reminds me an awful lot of my own grandmother, which is odd considering my grandmother was a Southern Baptist from rural Louisiana and Ms. Elaine is a Jew from New York City. She is very giving but at the same time brutally honest and blunt (therein lies the similarity). If she cooks a big pot of soup, she makes sure that we come over to get some. If I don't run into her or call her for a few weeks she gets extremely worried that something is wrong. She likes to lecture me about how leaving the outside lights on is a huge waste of money. She scolds me when she catches me at the mailbox in bare feet and she gasps in horror when the kids come running out behind me with no shoes on either. My kids have never left her house without a pocket full of lollipops.

On Friday, at the end of my Super Crappy Week, I got a call from Ms. Elaine wanting to know if I was headed to the grocery store, and if so, could I get her a rotisserie chicken for her dog? (She feeds her dog deli meat, I have no explanation for this.) I told her no, I was just leaving to get the kids from school, but that I could go for her tomorrow. Then she told me that she had been going through her things (she is getting ready to move out of her 5 bedroom house and back to New York to be close to her family) and that she had a gift for me. She had seen me walking down the road while the kids were out riding bikes, and wondered if I would like to have her bicycle. This bicycle:She bought it 50 years ago in New York, and she used to ride it with her kids to Coney Island. She kept it all these years because it was so dear to her, but she knew she would never ride it again and she also knew that I needed it. She made me promise not to sell it or give it away, to which I readily agreed. I LOVE it. LOVE. I am so grateful for this gift. It is SO beautiful and has been very well cared for, and it just gave me immense joy that was sorely needed at that moment. She could tell I was thrilled, and I could tell she felt good about thrilling me.

As I promised to come over right after school and started to hang up, she slipped in a quick question, "Now, what about that rotisserie chicken?"

Yes ma'am, I was just on my way to the store.